Mrs. Lirriper's Lodgings

by Charles Dickens

The three months paid for had run out and we had got without any fresh
overtures as to payment into May my dear, when there came an obligation
upon Mr. Edson to go a business expedition right across the Isle of Man,
which fell quite unexpected upon that pretty little thing and is not a
place that according to my views is particularly in the way to anywhere
at any time but that may be a matter of opinion. So short a notice was
it that he was to go next day, and dreadfully she cried poor pretty, and
I am sure I cried too when I saw her on the cold pavement in the sharp
east wind--it being a very backward spring that year--taking a last leave
of him with her pretty bright hair blowing this way and that and her arms
clinging round his neck and him saying "There there there. Now let me go
Peggy." And by that time it was plain that what the Major had been so
accommodating as to say he would not object to happening in the house,
would happen in it, and I told her as much when he was gone while I
comforted her with my arm up the staircase, for I says "You will soon
have others to keep up for my pretty and you must think of that."

His letter never came when it ought to have come and what she went
through morning after morning when the postman brought none for her the
very postman himself compassionated when she ran down to the door, and
yet we cannot wonder at its being calculated to blunt the feelings to
have all the trouble of other people's letters and none of the pleasure
and doing it oftener in the mud and mizzle than not and at a rate of
wages more resembling Little Britain than Great. But at last one morning
when she was too poorly to come running down-stairs he says to me with a
pleased look in his face that made me next to love the man in his uniform
coat though he was dripping wet "I have taken you first in the street
this morning Mrs. Lirriper, for here's the one for Mrs. Edson." I went
up to her bedroom with it as fast as ever I could go, and she sat up in
bed when she saw it and kissed it and tore it open and then a blank stare
came upon her. "It's very short!" she says lifting her large eyes to my
face. "O Mrs. Lirriper it's very short!" I says "My dear Mrs. Edson no
doubt that's because your husband hadn't time to write more just at that
time." "No doubt, no doubt," says she, and puts her two hands on her
face and turns round in her bed.

I shut her softly in and I crept down-stairs and I tapped at the Major's
door, and when the Major having his thin slices of bacon in his own Dutch
oven saw me he came out of his chair and put me down on the sofa. "Hush!"
says he, "I see something's the matter. Don't speak--take time." I says
"O Major I'm afraid there's cruel work up-stairs." "Yes yes" says he "I
had begun to be afraid of it--take time.